


They Say That Time's Supposed to Heal You

by untune_the_sky



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, But It's Hopeful!, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Canon-Typical Violence, Connections/Bonds Are Chosen, Everyone is psychic, Hopeful Ending, Lonely Steve Rogers, M/M, Natasha Is a Good Bro, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Psychics, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Steve Feels, Steve Is Working Through Some Stuff, Steve Knows Therapy Is Good (But Won't Go Do it), Steve Makes Poor Life Choices, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers-centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 08:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5327309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untune_the_sky/pseuds/untune_the_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing they don’t tell you, don’t warn you about, when you make that first connection – when you feel somebody else’s breath in your lungs for the first time – is that it fucking <i>hurts</i> when that’s gone. They don’t warn you, because it’s a difficult thing to comprehend; it’s a difficult thing to understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Say That Time's Supposed to Heal You

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this ambushed me. It is _not_ the thing I intended to be working on for the last couple days. :) But back to work on Walking Through Windows now. Maybe after I finish that, I'll come back to this and write the follow-up lurking in my brain. It's from Bucky's POV. I do so _love_ Bucky's POV. 
> 
> Many thanks to Tink for looking it over for me. Pinch-hit beta, you're the best. <3 If you see any terrible errors, they're mine. Let me know? Typos drive me nuts. 
> 
> The title of the fic is from Adele's "Hello." I tried really hard to make it be something else, but that song worked so damn well for this. I also listened to "Mad World" by Michael Andrews (featuring Gary Jules) and Lana Del Rey's version of "Once Upon A Dream." This fic bounced all over the place for a little while. Ah well. Let me know what you think!

The thing they don’t tell you, don’t warn you about, when you make that first connection – when you feel somebody else’s breath in your lungs for the first time – is that it fucking _hurts_ when that’s gone. They don’t warn you, because it’s a difficult thing to comprehend; it’s a difficult thing to understand.

And Steve hadn’t.

He’d never understood that. He’d never known what the loss of a fundamental connection felt like because, even when his mother died – when she’d been sheared out of his life – he’d had Bucky. He’d always been there, always existed. Bucky cushioned the worst of the blows life dealt Steve, held him together when he fractured – both mentally and physically.

Even when Bucky was drafted and left for Basic – when he’d been shipped overseas – they’d still had it. They’d still been connected. It had been tenuous, it had been weak, but it had been there.

On lonely nights, fingers tired and back aching after having spent far too long attempting to perfect promotional posters, Steve had closed his eyes and let himself drift. He’d let his mind float outward, away from the physical pain, and somewhere half a world away, he knew Bucky was doing the same. They’d meet in the middle, just linger there, quiet and _present_. It was a feeling like home, one that Steve had never been without, not since the first time they’d met; not since he was six and Bucky was seven.

The connection was instantaneous. He remembers when it happened exactly. One moment, he was alone. One moment, he was hurt and angry – so angry, near tears with it. One moment his lungs were tight and painful, his airways constricted as he waited for another blow to land. One moment he could feel the trickle of blood from his nose, the way it dripped off his chin – who knew a little boy could bleed so much? Who knew the sight of his own blood on a bully’s knuckles would make him feel so simultaneously hopeless and determined?

Who knew?

The next moment, his lungs weren’t his own anymore. The next moment, there was no blood on his face. The next moment, he was angry but it was righteous, it was indignant. The next moment, he could see himself bent over at the waist, bowed over dirty knees with blood splattered on the pavement beneath him. The next moment, the world tipped a little sideways.

But that was alright, because he could see it, he could see everything, feel everything – there was a rightness in the world that he’d never known before. There was a kindness directed toward him that he’d never suspected existed in the world outside of his mother.

 _Hello, hello,_ the kindness whispered through his mind, words slotting into places that had been empty before.

 _Hello_ , Steve whispered back, unable to let the greeting go unanswered. _Who are you?_

_I’m me, who are you?_

_I’m me, too._

But it was more than that, really. It was more than either of them suspected at the time. He was no longer simply _Steve_. He was no longer _singular_. He was part of something more, part of a whole that was no longer comprised of one person. He had, in that moment, become _half_ of a whole, one of two – he was no longer _alone_.

At six, there was no way he could have understood that.

At seven, there was no way Bucky could have, either.

Childhood connections are not uncommon, not at all. Children are generous with their souls, with their minds – they are forgiving and kind. Yes, they can be unbearably fickle, but they do not often understand that fickleness is an unkindness. Children form tenuous and temporary connections because it is the easiest form of communication.

The connections formed between parents and their children, however, are some of the strongest on Earth. They are fundamental.

Children do not often form such deep connections with one another.

Psychologists and psychiatrists, scientists and philosophers all hypothesize that this lack of deep psychic connection outside of a familial unit is a form of self-defense. The mind instinctively understands that to make such a connection at so fragile an age and then to _lose_ that connection… it would be detrimental. There have been studies done, of course. There are theories and first-hand accounts, research and interest – so much interest. All of it revolving around how children cope with the loss of a parent, the loss of a grounding and formative connection.

Steve knew, now. At least in part. He’d tasted it, when his mother passed, but he’d sought refuge in Bucky. Their connection allowed him to avoid the worst of the mental backlash he would have otherwise felt. He was not unmoored, only a little battered. He could recover.

Now, however, he knew what it was like to feel the connection, to know it was there, to know – to _know_ that it was going to end. He knew, because he’d watched Bucky fall off that train. He’d watched and he’d waited and he’d pushed – he’d pushed every bit of comfort he had inside him through the connection just to block out the horror, the terrified realization he could feel coming at him from the other end of the line. He’d pushed all of himself through their connection to make sure – to _know_ … to know _that_ was the last thing Bucky felt.

Not fear.

Not despair.

Not regret.

Not impotent rage.

Bucky felt, in the last moments before their connection was severed – before he _died_ … Bucky felt unconditional love.

And then he was gone.

Bucky was gone like he’d never been there, never existed inside Steve’s mind. Except that he had. He _had_. James Buchanan Barnes had existed. He had lived, made a home inside Steve’s head, his heart, and his sudden absence was the worst kind of emptiness. There was nothing to fill the void.

Steve did what he could. He tried – he tried so _hard_ to give Bucky the dignity of his choice, to work through the events on that train without feeling like it was his fault. Like he should have been able to do something, anything, to prevent them.

He tried so hard.

Then he made his own choice – his own reckless choice. It was the best option, of the ones available to him at the time. Steve made peace with it, his choice. He’d made peace with the gaping hole in his life. He’d made peace with Peggy – she’d understand. He loved her, she knew that.

As they spoke those last few sentences, they both knew that neither of them would have been able to get to the Stork Club next week. But it was a beautiful, ephemeral moment for Steve, just before the ice and the water, before the cold rushed up and yanked the breath from him his lungs.

Almost seven decades later, it was still one of the kindest things anyone had ever done for him. That moment of quiet, beautiful fantasy before the end of all things.

Or not the end of all things.

Just the end of all the things Steve had ever known.

He woke up in a room, a game on the radio. He’d been at that game. The nurse’s hair was all wrong. Why was she wearing a man’s tie? What on _Earth_ was – what kind of brassier would do _that_?

He probably shouldn’t be looking.

He should most definitely be running.

And after that, very few things sunk in for him. Not for a good, long while.

His head, though. His head was still eerily quiet.

And why shouldn’t it be?

He might have been able to hold out for Peggy. He might have, back then – back in 1944. He might have been able to heal enough to form another connection, but not now. Not now, in this brave new world full of aliens and gods, painful legacies and history’s half-lies. Steve doesn’t want to connect with any of these people, to let any of them into his mind.

Steve doesn’t want anyone but Bucky. And Bucky… well. Bucky’s long gone. Peggy’s mind is crumbling. Sometimes, when he’s with her, he can feel the faintest flicker, the brush of her thoughts against his own. It’s familiar, but it’s… it’s unwelcome. He never returns the gesture.

Why return it now when he’s so very, very close to losing her, too?

 

* * *

 

Natasha comes close to making him reconsider, sometimes. They don’t have similar life experiences, not on the surface of things, but they _do_ both understand what it’s like to be turned into a weapon for one’s country. He became what he is willingly. He wanted this – the body, the stamina, the speed… the ability to make a difference. Natasha was molded into her current form by ungentle hands, unkind bodies, minds that forced their way into her and made her conform to _their_ standards of perfection.

Steve saw the video of her ‘interrogation’ of Loki. He saw what she let Loki see, he saw things he’s not sure she would want anyone else to have seen.

 _Love is for children_.

There had to be truth to that, in her mind.

 _I owe him a debt_.

She had to believe that on some level, to make Loki believe that she believed it.

But then Steve wonders if Loki _did_ believe her. In the end, she said it, but what he said in return, about making Clint kill her in all the most _intimate_ ways she feared. Well, Steve’s not so sure the god of mischief and trickery actually bought what Natasha was selling.

Then again, he’s not a spy. He’s not a spook. He’s not a sneaky person by nature. Considering Loki tipped his hand, regardless of what he bought and what he didn’t, maybe Steve should just stop trying to figure out what’s going on in Natasha’s mind.

He doesn’t want her in his head.

She’s already got Clint in hers. They move the same way Bucky and Steve used to move. He can _tell_ they’ve got a connection that runs deeper than skin, deeper that muscle. Maybe – he thinks _maybe_ someone might be able to find out how deep that connection goes – if they get down to bone and crack it open, suck the marrow out.

So he thinks about how she sometimes comes almost close enough to make him ponder another connection. But then he reminds himself that it would be useless. It’s not that Steve wants the same kind of unconditional connection that he and Bucky had shared. That was old, that was worn and safe. That connection had been so strong – _so_ strong. There are moments when Steve thinks… sometimes, it’s almost like he should be able to feel it, still. They were a unit, they were solid and sound and invincible.

They _should_ have been invincible.

When he’s feeling particularly sorry for himself, when the edge of loneliness and desperation cuts a little too sharply, sometimes Steve lets himself drift.

You don’t find connections like that every day. It’s not soulmates, it’s not anything so cliché, but it’s _something_. It’s something to which nobody’s ever been able to put words. He and Bucky weren’t unique, those types of connections have always been the stuff of legends, of myths. But somehow, he and Bucky never made it into the history books. Their story isn’t the one that’s been retold, embellished with each retelling.

Their story lives in his mind.

Steve thinks their story might live in heavily redacted SSR files somewhere, lost in the depths of SHIELD’s non-digital archives. He wonders who made the call to erase his connection to Bucky from the record books. It wouldn’t have been Peggy. He knows she had to have stepped in at some point, had to have agreed to someone’s PR spin. Or maybe it had all gotten out of hand. He’ll never know, not when sometimes she doesn’t remember him at all, and others it’s like she’s seeing him for the first time all over again.

But Peggy’s the one the history books talk about. Steve doesn’t begrudge her that. He can’t even be angry with whoever decided the PR spin needed to happen. She’s the one they all think he was connected to. And she was – she was such a _good_ friend. They _could_ have been more. He knows it. Without Bucky, she could have become his everything – she might have been able to form a space for herself in the hollow Bucky’s death left behind. He thinks he would have let her. He thinks he would have welcomed it, eventually.

Steve thinks about this a lot.

His mind loops through possibilities, probabilities, flashbacks to action and profound inaction. He runs through scenarios, having read the reports, the files on everything that came after he put down _The Valkyrie_. Steve knows where his men served. He knows the generalities of their lives. He knows they survived the war, and went on to become great men, each in their own right. He can tick off the high points of all of their careers on his fingers, if asked.

No one ever asks.

 

* * *

 

Natasha, Steve thinks, sees more than most. Which means Clint sees more than most, given their connection. He wonders if Clint and Natasha can float through the ether of the psychic plane, find one another with ease the way he and Bucky once had. They might tell him, if he let the question escape, but he never will.

It’s not just the displacement, the fact that he’s a man out of time with different customs still deeply ingrained, different measuring sticks of politeness and correctness. Steve doesn’t _want_ to know. Knowing that someone else has that – it might help. It might not. He doesn’t want to know one way or the other because it might offer some type of confirmation. He doesn’t know what it would confirm, not in the depths of his own mind. He doesn’t know, and it frightens him sometimes.

But Steve always knew Bucky better than he knew himself.

So Natasha might see the wounds that linger, that refuse to scab over and scar. Clint might see them. But neither of them speak of it, neither of them reference the damage they must both know exists, neither of them suggest therapy.

Steve doesn’t think he could handle therapy – someone trying to pry into his mind without actually being _in_ it.

The thought makes him a little sick to his stomach.

He knows – Steve _knows_ that modern therapy is good. He knows shell shock and battle fatigue have new names, that people can get _help_ for them. He knows that it’s nothing to be ashamed of, but. But what’s the point? What’s the point of _talking_ about a thing that someone _could_ just slip into his mind to understand?

It’s in the desperate moments that he thinks that.

It’s in the quiet, still moments after midnight, before dawn, that Steve sometimes considers just – just letting _someone_ in. Anyone. The emptiness positively echoes in the dark, like glass splintering and falling, hitting tile or marble or steel.

So he lets himself drift.

Steve lets his mind float, like he used to, and sometimes he can feel flickers of thought from other people – the gentle touch of a child’s mind curious and incautious, the speculative brush of a twenty-something’s lonely thoughts as they search for a different type of relief, the firm wall of an older businesswoman’s thorough and complete rebuff. Tendrils, fingertips that touch accidentally and slide away, never to be felt again. None of them would ever know that it was Steve Rogers, Captain America, whose quiet, lonely mind had so briefly ghosted past their own.

Sometimes, like the faintest of wishes being granted, he imagines he feels something else. The tiniest, weakest sense of familiarity, of acknowledgement. Steve knows it’s sick, in its own way, twisted and distinctly wretched, but sometimes the acknowledgement, the familiar tug at the back of his mind – it feels like the old connection. Frayed, rubbed raw, dirty and mostly broken… in those moments when he feels most alone, sometimes Steve imagines he can still feel Bucky somehow, somewhere on the other end of the line.

Steve spent twenty-two years of his life connected to another person. He spent twenty-two _years_ knowing the inner workings of another person’s mind. He knew when Bucky was hungry, when he was hot, when he was lying. He knew when Bucky was in pain and when he was happy, when he needed silence and when he needed Steve to pick up a conversation just to save him from himself. There’s a book somewhere that talks about the Romans and battle legions, about the connections formed between brothers in arms, about all kinds of things.

They had that, too. They had the ability to read one another, move in sync, to merge consciousnesses and _be_. When he’s at his worst, when his apartment is silent and even the knowledge that he’s not the only lonely person in the world isn’t enough to stave off the ache in his chest, that’s what Steve remembers best. It’s not the tandem movement, it’s not knowing what Bucky was going to say before he said it – those aren’t the things he misses.

Steve misses just _being_. Just the wordless acceptance, the utter stillness of another person engulfing his mind and wrapping him up safe.

He did that for Bucky, after Azzano. It’d never been something he needed to do much, before. As the war had worn on, he’d felt Bucky pulling at him through the connection, thin though it had become. That place, ethereal and distant, is where he went in the Vita-Ray machine when the serum burned through him, searing away the old him, the sickly him. He let himself float far – farther than he’d ever gone before. He shot straight to Bucky and hid inside his mind, listening to the reverberations of his own screams of pain as they ricocheted down their connection and through Bucky’s skull.

Unthinking reassurance.

Bucky had been so bewildered.

Steve had tried to hide the worst of it from him.

Thinking about it now, thinking about how Bucky’s consciousness had held him secure while his body changed, while the serum fixed everything that was wrong with him, Steve feels an odd peace.

He also feels a throbbing despair.

He lost his father before he had a chance to know the man. He lost his mother to tuberculosis. And then he lost Bucky.

Steve tries not to pity himself, he does. He tries to keep the grief bottled up, but sometimes he just can’t. Sometimes it’s too much.

Sometimes, he wonders if he could have pulled Bucky’s mind through the connection rather than pushing so much love into him. Sometimes, Steve wonders if it’s possible to pluck someone else out of their body, to let them live inside you. He knows – it’s not a thing that you’re even supposed to consider. It’s not a thing that’s really spoken of. It’s not a thing people like to acknowledge. There are too many possibilities – there’s too much opportunity for abuse, if you could manage that.

Someone out there in the world has to know.

That person, though, is not Steve. That person will never _be_ Steve.

 

* * *

 

It was a long fall.

Steve’s had a lot of time, these past two years, to think about it. He’s had a lot of time to think about a lot of things.

The assassin, when Steve throws the shield on the roof, moves in ways that are familiar. He thinks it’s uncanny, at the time. When he finds out about the Soviet link, he thinks it might have something to do with Natasha. He’s been training with her for long enough that he knows her style. She’s got flair. You don’t fight her and then forget about it.

There’s the flicker of something, not recognition, but _something_ in the assassin’s eyes just before he throws the shield in return. Steve skids backward on the roof, baffled, but he’s locked up so tight inside his mind that it takes him a moment to realize he could figure it out the instinctive way. By then, it’s too late. And _then_ he can’t believe the thought even crossed his mind.

Black paste around the eyes. Eyes that look haunted, determined, not unkind. How can an assassin seem _not_ unkind? He just put three very large bullets into a man that Steve ostensibly considers a friend. He just jumped off of a roof and disappeared. Steve doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows he needs to find out.

He makes it to the SHIELD-vetted hospital just in time to watch Nick Fury flatline.

He makes it out of the Triskelion the following day barely unscathed.

He makes it through the following days in a piecemeal sort of way.

Sam Wilson proves himself a true friend, and Steve has that moment, that pause where he considers and discards the potential connection. Sam has lost someone, too, and Steve doesn’t think that either of them would want to risk it, risk the loss. Especially given what they’re up against. Maybe later.

Maybe one day.

Maybe Steve will be able to trust someone not to die again.

And then –

And then –

The bridge.

The assassin’s movements – still so familiar. Brutal, like nothing Steve has ever truly encountered. Slapdash ballet and back-alley brawling, efficient and deadly all at once. It’s beautiful. It would be beautiful to watch, if he weren’t only just managing to keep a knife from his sinking into his throat.

Steve feels a strange touch against his mind. It’s bizarre. It’s a hot, jagged thing, a broken carapace coated in gasoline. He thinks it’s going to go up in flames at any moment, he thinks if he lets it in, it will take him with it. He thinks that he might not mind. He thinks –

And then Steve stops thinking.

It’s a moment that he will never forget. It’s like the first time he met Bucky. It’s like watching Bucky fall from the train. It’s an instant, there and gone, fleeting in the grand scheme of the universe, that will forever mark the paradigm shift Steve’s world undergoes.

The mask comes off.

Steve is sideswiped by a face – a face he knows better than his own.

Unthinking, he drops every single mental shield and block he’s created, everything meant to keep others out. He opens his mind in the blink of an eye, and the hot, jagged thing he felt brush against his thoughts earlier digs in.

It hurts.

_Bucky?_

_Who the hell is Bucky?_

It’s like losing him all over again; it’s like Steve’s soul is being torn in two. The mind that’s latched onto his own is hard, harsh – it lacks subtlety, it lacks tact, it lacks all knowledge of kindness. It tries to scythe through him, and Steve leaves himself open to it – but that also means he leaves himself open to others. Sam is there, mind a bright light that shines through the darkness of the psychic landscape. Natasha is there, mind a brilliant red, rocket launcher on her shoulder. She’s been shot. Steve knows this because the knowledge is suddenly in his head, she is suddenly _present_. Sam is winded and tired, but _present_.

Between the two of them, they pry the painful hooks out of Steve’s mind. Bucky disappears. Sam and Natasha, through unspoken agreement, wrap their consciousnesses around Steve’s mind, hiding his vulnerability as the STRIKE team descends. A psychic wall constructed of layered thoughts – layer upon layer of protection.

It takes him… longer than it should, Steve thinks, to put up his shields and the blocks again. He is reluctant. Bucky is _out there_. Bucky is out there somewhere, but Steve hadn’t known. He couldn’t have known. There’s no connection – _why_ is there no connection?

Shock.

Trauma.

Amnesia.

There are so many possibilities – so many. And all of them, no matter their source, their cause… all of them amount to the same damn thing. Bucky is out there, his mind an unlit pyre just waiting for someone to strike a match. He’s out there, somewhere, and Steve has no hope of finding him.

 

* * *

 

He gets a second chance, though. Steve gets a second chance. He knows the others don’t agree, but none of them know Bucky. None of them know him the way Steve does – the way he _did_. Once upon a time, their minds were so thoroughly melded, they might have been interchangeable. Once upon a time…

‘Once upon a time’ is for fairy tales, though, and what Steve finds on that helicarrier is not a fairy tale. It’s not for children. It’s not even for the average adult. Steve finds the shattered pieces of a mind that… might be the one he once knew. The spikes and knives inside it might be shaped in a similar way, might form familiar corridors. There are misshapen places, there are scars; there are entire portions of this mind that are simply gone. But Steve opens his own mind again, he opens himself wide.

_You’re my mission._

_You’re my friend._

_Shut up. SHUT UP. You’re. My. MISSION._

_Then finish it. Cause I’m with you. ’Til the end of the line._

It’s like ice. It’s like fire. It’s a terrible moment, trapped between shatterproof, bulletproof glass and a metal fist – waiting. Waiting for something – for anything.

The scythe is there. The hard carapace covering this mind he once knew. The gasoline ready to ignite. He expects the scythe to slice his consciousness from his physical form. A psychic death would be as permanent as a physical one. Steve’s eyes are half-lidded, part of his mind held captive on the psychic plane as he waits for the end, for the end of all things. What he finds, instead, is that the barbed wire and broken glass inside the mind held so still over him are shivering.

The barbed wire does not disappear. The pieces of glass do not realign to form a window. They do not miraculously reform into a recognizably human mindscape. They do, however, shoot toward Steve. It is uncoordinated. It is messy. It is, above all else, painful. Steve’s body seizes as his mind feels those edges latch into him.

 _I’m sorry, I’m sorry._ The mind speaking the words is familiar. Not the same, but close. _I’m sorry, I can’t – I don’t know how – I’m sorry. I’m so sorry._

The glass beneath him breaks.

Steve lets his eyes close completely, wind whipping past his ears in a frenzy. He’s weightless. Everything hurts, absolutely everything, but worst of all – worst of all, he feels the heaviness of suppressed memories, rough-edged and brutal, trampled and probably irreparable, leaking into him through the holes Bucky’s jagged thoughts have punched into his mind.

It’s not a connection, not a true connection, but the feedback he gets as he plummets, as he watches himself plummet through eyes open despite the chill wind whipping tears from them, he thinks it might be enough. It might be just enough to let him rest, to let him die in peace.

 _It’s okay,_ Steve decides, nudging the words toward the tip of a shard of foreign consciousness where it’s embedded. _It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. But it’s okay now._

 _It’s not okay,_ the new-old voice says, syllables like knives. _It’s not okay. What are you doing? Where are you going?_

Steve can’t answer with words.

He hits the water, shoving all the good things he’s ever felt toward the parts of Bucky’s mind that have invaded his own. He shoves them into Bucky’s head as he begins to sink. The force of impact from such a height knocks the breath out of his lungs, knocks the sense out of his skull. He loses himself as the world around him fades into muffled, faraway explosions.

 _It’s not okay. Where are you_ going _? Don’t – don’t leave me. You can’t leave me._

Steve’s mind is blank. A clean slate of white noise and cold water – he’s familiar with cold water. He won’t freeze here, it’s not _that_ cold. But it’s cold enough to shock his system. He feels an uncertain touch, a weak scrabble of thought rushing over and around his consciousness from the barbed wire and broken glass overlaying his mind.

Unconsciousness claims him even as he tries to take hold of those thoughts. Water rushes into his lungs.

 

* * *

 

Waking up to light and warmth, Steve is momentarily disoriented. There is something… something strange. He can see farther on the psychic plane than he’s ever been able to before, a familiar mind sits beside him. Another, different mind lurks… so far away. Why is it so far away?

_On your left._

_Hey, man._

_What happened?_

_A lot. Wake up all the way, I’ll give you the rundown._

_Okay._

_You might want to put up a few shields. Natasha and I have been covering you, but she’s gone to call in a few favors._

_Right. Thanks._

_No problem._

It takes Steve a few long, laborious moments to begin reconstructing his shields. He wonders how long they’ve been down – but he knows. They’ve been down since the helicarrier. They’ve been down since he let Bucky dig his talon-sharp thoughts into any part of Steve’s mind that he could reach. They’re still there, the hooks in his mind. Burrs stuck inside him – he is constantly aware of them.

He pauses mid-thought, mid-block, mid-shield.

Steve is _constantly_ aware of them.

_Sam?_

_Yeah?_

_I can find him._


End file.
